January 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

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[Clips] Key Technology
by R. A. Hettinga 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 17:47:23 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Key Technology Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB113753529668348891.html> The Wall Street Journal January 18, 2006 BUSINESS EUROPE Key Technology By BRUNO GIUSSANI January 18, 2006 ZURICH -- Car-sharing used to be mainly an option for environmental activists who would use a car only for lack of "greener" alternatives. Today it is increasingly hip to be a car-sharer, particularly among socially conscious urban types with fast and flexible lifestyles. These people may not need a car often and don't want the expense of maintenance and insurance or the inconvenience of circling nearby blocks looking for a parking spot when they do drive. As a result, car-sharing is growing all across Europe. The German CarSharing Association has over 70 member companies operating locally in 250 cities. The Italian government has put $9 million into Iniziativa CarSharing to promote the model countrywide. Corporations are also discovering its advantages. But none of this would have been possible had the leading companies in the industry not used some widely available wireless technology to solve a (literally) key problem -- how to give the car keys to the customers. For all intents and purposes, car-sharing firms are car rental companies based on a slightly different economic model: One has to sign up as a member first and pay a basic annual fee. But beyond this step lies the familiar sequence of reserving, picking up, driving and returning the car, as well as paying per usage. In the case of car-sharing, however, a member who needs to go pick up a piece of furniture on a Saturday, for example, can rent a car for just a couple of hours rather than paying for an entire day or weekend. The other main difference is that they are self-service car rental companies. This is more than just a semantic detail. If you book a car from a traditional rental company, the contract is enacted when, after having walked into the agency and filled out the paperwork, you're given the car key. A self-service car rental, however, doesn't have branches you can walk into, or agents to hand you the key. For years, this was a problem for car-sharing companies. For Mobility, Europe's largest car-sharing firm with 63,000 members and 1,800 vehicles in Switzerland, it came to a head in 1999 when it had 10 cars stolen in a single night. The company realized it needed to change its key-handout procedure, which up till then consisted of giving members a universal key that opened any of hundreds of "key boxes" located next to cars kept in public parking lots or near train stations nationwide. In these marked boxes were the actual keys of those cars. The system worked surprisingly well for a while, but nothing impeded members from opening the box, getting a key and taking a car without having a reservation, or without paying -- or even from showing up with friends, taking all the keys, and driving away with all the vehicles. That's what happened that night in 1999. By then, cellphone coverage in Switzerland was becoming almost seamless (it is today). Built into the GSM protocols is a popular feature called SMS that allows for the sending of short messages between phones and among other wireless devices. SMS is one of the technologies that Mobility seized upon to solve the key problem that was jeopardizing its very survival. Another is RFID, or Radio Frequency ID, an automatic identification system that relies on cheap electronic tags and sensors. Mobility combined the two with a custom-made onboard computer, redesigning the way it works and producing a quite dramatic impact: None of its cars has been stolen since. Now Mobility -- like several other car-sharing companies, such as Cambio in Belgium, CarCityClub in Italy and Denzel in Austria, which use comparable systems -- manages the car keys quite differently. Upon sign-up, every customer receives an RFID card that contains their personal and membership data. When they call the customer desk (currently only 15% of all bookings and falling) or book a car through the Web (the rest), Mobility's main computer sends the reservation details to the onboard computer via SMS. To pick up a car, customers wave their RFID card in front of a sensor installed under the windshield. The onboard computer compares the two sets of data: that from the card and that from the SMS. If they match, it unlocks the car. The keys are in the glove compartment. Even if a thief smashed the window and took the key, the engine will not ignite. Without proper RFID identification, the computer will not allow it. The SMS/RFID system has a couple of disadvantages. First, if a car is parked in an area without GSM coverage, the booking information cannot be passed to the onboard computer, which in turn will not unlock the door when the renter shows up. But as coverage extends, that's very unlikely: Mobility says it has never had such a case. More significantly, the whole scheme has added about $1,500 to the cost of each car, which discourages the rapid rotation of the fleet. However, that cost is already decreasing. And the system, on top of allowing down-to-the-minute usage monitoring and reporting, offers a huge upside: By optimizing management, new fleets can be rolled out with little effort. Enter Business CarSharing, the corporate fleet outsourcing service launched only two years ago by Mobility and which accounts already for one-sixth of its business (total revenues in 2004 were of 43 million Swiss francs, or $29 million). Companies use a fleet of cars and vans and other vehicles managed by Mobility, but as part of the deal their traveling personnel can also book any other Mobility car across the country. They travel to another city by train or plane, go to the Mobility parking lot, swipe that RFID card in front of the windshield's sensor and drive to the customer. (Some of the other companies mentioned above provide similar services.) What's next? With the card in the pockets of tens of thousands of people, it's imaginable that the scheme could be developed into a hybrid of car-sharing and public transportation: The same card would allow people to purchase a train ticket and book the car to use at destination, with the two items showing up on the same invoice at the end of the month. All this is enabled by the "cloud" of wireless connectivity that increasingly surrounds us and the objects of our daily lives. By plugging into it, car-sharing companies have designed systems that give them flexibility, efficiency and control. As for Mobility, besides transforming itself from a dwindling entity into an exemplary business, it removed the memory of that night in 1999. Mr. Giussani is the author of several books on technology and society. His blog is at giussani.typepad.com. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[solinym@gmail.com: Re: Echelon papers leaked]
by Eugen Leitl 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

----- Forwarded message from "Travis H." <solinym(a)gmail.com> -----

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by Williams Foley 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

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[dave@farber.net: [IP] Mining for kids: Children can't opt out of Pentagon recruitment database]
by Eugen Leitl 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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by Bessie Xiong 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

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by Lilian Tuttle 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

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[pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz: Echelon papers leaked]
by Eugen Leitl 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

----- Forwarded message from Peter Gutmann <pgut001(a)cs.auckland.ac.nz> -----

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[perry@piermont.com: NY Times reports that spy program is not narrowly targeted]
by Eugen Leitl 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> -----

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[dave@farber.net: [IP] our way of life is indeed in trouble:]
by Eugen Leitl 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

If only voluntary segregation with subsequent secession was an option. ----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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